The cheapest business you will ever start.
A virtual practice needs a laptop, booking software and a website. No lease, no fit-out, no receptionist, no waiting room.
Clients already prefer it.
People book therapy in the gap between meetings, after the children are asleep, from a parked car. The round trip to an office is the reason a lot of them never start at all.
Virtual sessions removed that. They also removed the geography: your practice is open to all of Ontario rather than the people willing to drive to one address.
Every figure on this site is linked to the body that published it. See all sources.
What it costs to run.
A physical practice starts at a lease, a deposit, insurance on the space, furniture, a phone line and somebody to answer it. That is thousands of dollars before a client walks in, and it is due every month whether they do or not.
$150 to $210 a month. Two sessions covers it. Everything after that is yours.
Telehealth first, a lease later.
If you want a room eventually, start virtual anyway.
A virtual practice tells you what you would otherwise pay a landlord to find out: whether people book you, what they pay, how many come back, and what a client costs you to reach. You learn it in three months at $200 a month instead of three years at $2,000.
When you do sign a lease, you sign it with a full calendar and a number you trust, and you keep the virtual practice running alongside it.
Work when it suits you.
Evening and early morning slots are the ones clients ask for and the ones clinics are worst at offering.
Working from home, those hours cost you nothing. No building to open, no commute either side. You set your availability once and the booking system holds the line for you.
It also means you can start before you leave. Most people keep one or two clinic days while their own calendar fills, which is the whole reason this is a low-risk way to go independent.
See the schedule.
Seven meetings over eight weeks, and what becomes true at the end of each one.